As a farm girl in eastern Oregon, feeding bottles to bummer lambs and babysitting herlittle sister, Jackie Shannon Hollis expected to become a mother someday. After a seriesof failed relationships, she met Bill, the man she wanted to spend her life with. A man who never wanted children. Saying I do meant saying I don’t to a rite of passage her body and her culture had prepared her for since childhood.

Told in short interwoven chapters, This Particular Happiness explores the fracturing of female identity as Shannon Hollis questions her childless decision, navigates her roles as daughter and wife and sister and friend, and ultimately learns to listen to her own heart.
This debut memoir is about what we keep and what we abandon to make space in our lives for love.

About Jackie
Jackie Shannon Hollis, a lifelong Oregonian, resides with her husband in a home her friends call the tree house. Her education and work as a counselor pushed her to hold up the mirror to her own self. In addition to thinking she would be a mother someday, she once dreamed of being a June Taylor dancer or a racecar driver. Her short stories and essays have been published in The Sun, Slice, Inkwell, High Desert Journal, VoiceCatcher, Nailed, Rosebud, and other publications. As a childless woman surrounded by children (with over forty nieces and nephews and grand nieces and nephews), Jackie believes we all have an important role in supporting the children in our lives.